memory, other
by Imadra Blue
Summary: Paul understands Alia, knows Alia, but can never be like her. Gen, but with disturbing themes.


**Pairing:** None, technically, though Paul/Chani is present, and Paul/Alia is considered.  
**Warnings:** Incestual Themes (But no incest.)  
**Disclaimer:** _Dune_ and all related franchises do not belong to me. It all belongs to Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson since Frank Herbert's death, and I assure you, that is a tragedy.  
**Notes:** Set between _Dune_ and _Dune Messiah_, though can easily be fit into either the _Dune_ 1984 film continuity or the _Dune_ and _Children of Dune_ TV mini-series continuity. Written as a New Year's Resolution 2007 story for Yuletide. Beta-read by the wonderful Leianora.

...

There is never a time when Paul doesn't taste the cinnamon of spice on his tongue. It is ever present, like the dry heat of Arrakis, the growing intrigues of his enemies, the memories of those who came before him, the soft comfort of Chani's arms winding around his shoulders at night.

Sometimes, he remembers Leto and mourns, but he forgets if he mourns his father or his son. Chani helps him bear the pain, her touch like rain on Caladan, soothing, cooling, sustaining. She suffers for the son, but for Paul, the two Letos are one.

He can't decide whether to hate his mother for leaving him. She didn't belong on Arrakis, she never had, and he resents her for that, most of all. He knows he belongs here in this desert prison, but he resents the chains of responsibility that bind him to it. Jessica left him with everything. Even her daughter, Alia.

Alia.

The name rolls off his tongue when he says it. His sister walks in his shadow, her blue-within-blue eyes holding his gaze when he turns to her. No one else can hold his gaze so long, not even Chani. No one else can come close to understanding him, and he, her.

Alia is a vicious girl, but never towards Paul. With Paul she is gentle, compassionate, sympathetic, full of emotions that many are unaware she even possesses. She can kill with little effort, and she takes risks Paul never would. Yet, even when she is reckless, she is never careless. She is everything he is, but compressed, contained, condensed.

She is sister, but in other places and other times, she is wife. Sometimes he forgets whose bed he belongs in, and imagines he is Leto and she is Jessica. And when he winds up in his twelve-year-old sister's room at night and lays his head in her lap, she never sends him away. She strokes his hair and murmurs things their mother used to tell their father.

He doesn't touch her as Leto touched Jessica, but he know that he wants to. Whether that want is his or someone else's, he doesn't bother to clarify. It does not matter, for it is not a desire he will ever indulge. He touches her as Paul should touch Alia, and she seems content with that most of the time. If he searches along the many futures spread in front of him like a spider's web, he can easily find the ones where he makes Alia a concubine. None of those futures end well, and he discards them, avoids them. He is Alia's guardian, her father, her brother, her Emperor, her god, but never her lover.

Chani doesn't entirely understand his relationship with Alia, but she doesn't ask. There is no jealousy in her eyes, only concern. In all the futures where Paul takes Alia as concubine, Chani is never jealous. She seems to know that there's not just Paul inside of Paul, and not just Alia inside of Alia. Alia, however, is never so understanding. Many of those futures end with Alia's crysknife in Chani's throat, and Paul cannot allow that. He knows he must one day let Chani die, but he will never let her die like that.

Paul knows, too, that he must let Alia die as well. All the women he loves are doomed to die, as all mortals must, but only Chani will die before he does. She will suffer, but he will do everything he can to ease her pain, to make her death as kind as possible. His mother, he can spare such suffering, but not Alia. He knows he cannot stop Alia from forgetting herself, but he also knows she will eventually remember.

Paul always remembers who he is, always recalls himself when the clamor of Other Memory threatens to drown him out, but he is never sure if Alia can. Her followers look upon her as a goddess, and she plays the part with a grace that Paul can never muster, but he _knows_ her. He knows when she sits on her bed at night, staring out of her moonlight-drenched windows, wondering who she is. He knows exactly how mortal she is.

He spent many years as Paul, before he became Muad'dib. Alia never had any time to herself. She never got to chase dogs through gardens full of plants so tall that they obscured the sky. She never got to watch the rain drip down her bedroom window. She never got to meet Duncan Idaho in a mock battle. She never got to walk along a beach, barefoot, digging her toes into wet sand. She never got to discover her inner self during childhood lessons with her mother. She never had any dreams or confusing moments or goals that were not tied to Paul. The childhood he enjoyed has been denied to her, by their mother's own folly. Alia can only ever visit Caladan in Other Memory.

Memory.

Memory is the ghost that haunts the Atreides family. If Paul reaches back far enough into his Other Memory, he can recall an ancient book with ghosts of past, present, and future that visit an old miser on a holiday evening. The author seemed to understand the plight of the Atreides, for these same ghosts walk in the footsteps of every living member of the Atreides family, but are not so kind as to restrict their activities to the holidays.

If Paul turns and stares too long into the ghost of the future, he can see a day when his memory will terrify his descendants. He knows they will turn from him, until they realize that he possesses answers that they do not want, but need. It won't be long now until he becomes but a memory living within another. He only regrets that Alia shall never pass her memory to another.

...

Sunlight pours through the palace's large window. Alia sits beside the window, bathed in the light, and stares out at the bustling city below. She is thirteen now, her body stretching out towards adulthood with an open hand. Though she grows and changes in form, her spirit remains the same. She was born old, wholly formed in mind. Alia will die as she was born, with no mental change other than what her memory forces upon her.

"Do you remember Caladan?" Paul asks her.

Alia's smile is thin, and when she speaks, her girl's voice is colored with impending womanhood. "Yes. Sometimes, I sit by this window and wait for it to rain, but I know it never will."

The light of Arrakis's sun makes the library appear golden. Paul half-expects Irulan to come in, for the library is one of the few places she belongs in this palace, but she lurks outside the door, watching, waiting, learning, listening. Alia's bronze hair glitters under the sun, and Leto whispers inside Paul's mind that only Jessica was ever so beautiful.

"Where is Chani?" Alia asks.

Paul reminds Leto that Chani is the woman that Paul loves. Chani, who is every bit as beautiful as Alia. Leto quiets and leaves Paul in peace. "She is resting."

Alia's eyes are clear as she studies Paul. "She wasn't able to conceive, was she?"

Paul shakes his head. "She'll discover that when she wakes up."

"Do you know—?"

"I know many things, sister," Paul interrupts, before Irulan can hear. "Do not concern yourself with Chani. She will bear my child when the time is right."

Alia nods, and Paul wonders if she understands. She is powerful, his sister, capable of things he cannot do, but her vision is limited, hampered by her own fears. He brushes a lock of hair from her oval face and smiles. "In time, you will understand everything." He smells melange on her, and the smile fades.

Alia stares at Paul's throat. "I can only see Caladan through our mother's eyes. I see you when you were a little boy, a toddler with pudgy hands. You lost a ball on the water once, when you were small. It was a big blue one that floated out across the sea, lost forever. You cried for hours."

"I'd nearly forgotten about that." It is odd, how Paul can so easily forget his childhood on Caladan, but can't forget the memories of his parents, his grandparents, his children, his grandchildren.

"You spent so much time with Duncan and Gurney, that I often thought you'd forget about me. That you'd be lost in your sword-fighting and world of men, and forget where you really belong."

Paul swallowed and grabbed Alia by the shoulders. He shakes her until she finally looks up at him, generous lips parting in surprise. "Paul!"

"No, not you, Alia. You never worried about such things. Our mother did. And you're not our mother." He searches her eyes, but Alia is hard to find in the depths.

"Yes, of course." Alia slips out of Paul's' grip, her brow furrowing. "It's… the only way I can see Caladan. That I can see you, when you were young."

"If you want to see so badly, then ask me. Ask me anything of my childhood. I'll tell you." Paul drops to his knees and takes Alia's hand in his. He could not lose her yet, and she had to know this. She could fight it a little longer. "Just please stop looking through our mother's memories."

"You were fourteen. You kissed a boy to see what it was like, a blue-eyed boy that worked in the stables. Thufir saw you, and he told you to never do it again. You made him promise never to tell, and he didn't. But mother found out, from the stable boy. Do you remember that?"

Paul works his jaw and doesn't know what to say. The moment was one of the more embarrassing of his youth. He no longer dwells on it as he once did, nor about what it means. He has more important things to think of than blue-eyed boys who captured his adolescent interest.

"Do you think that was you… or _him_?" Alia demands, leaning forward. They both know of whom she speaks, but it is not him that she wants to know about. Paul knows what she wants. She wants to know if she's alone or not.

"That was before we came to Arrakis, Alia, you know that. It was me." There is only one person in Paul's family who will fall sway to the Baron Harkonnen's perversions, and it will not be him. Whatever that kiss with the boy means, it does not make Paul a slave to the Baron's whims.

"But sometimes, don't you…"

"Sometimes I forget myself. We both do. But we always remember in the end, always."

Alia nods. Her eyes sparkle as she turns to face the window, and she wipes her face with her long fingers. "Do you remember anything about your childhood without their help, Paul? Anything important?"

"I remember everything." Paul hangs his head and once again wonders why their mother left Alia with him. She would be safer on Caladan, away from all of this. "You could go to Caladan yourself, if you wanted."

"I can't." Alia turns her face in his direction, so the light plays on only half of her face. For once, Paul can see her peering at him from her eyes, without taint of Jessica or the Baron or anyone else in her Other Memory. "You need me. I can see that much."

Paul doesn't answer her, for he knows Alia is right. He needs her, for her actions will be the foundation on the golden empire his child will build. Even the actions that will lead to her own destruction will be part of that foundation.

"I wish you had grown up on Caladan beside me," Paul whispers. "We could have gone swimming together. You would have loved swimming, Alia. All that water, the sensation of floating, cradled by the tides, nothing to bind you in one direction—that's what real freedom is, I think."

"Yes. I would have liked that." Alia's voice is dreamy now, as is her expression. She lifts her hand and strokes Paul's cheek for a moment before dropping her hand as if burned. Paul wishes her fingers would have lingered, but silences the thought.

Paul stands up and tries not to think of the future where Alia leaps out of a window high above the palace steps, demons of the past growling at her heels. That is a long time in coming, for she will hold out for many years. Even without a past, without a childhood spent swimming on the shores of Caladan, there is enough of Alia to combat her Other Memory for much longer than Paul could have, had he been born in her position. He cannot tell her that she is the strong one, for it will make no sense to her, not yet.

He knows he's a coward, for he will leave the future of the human race in the hands of his children, and his Empire in her hands. As he turns and leaves Alia to her thoughts, he can't help but think that though history will remember Alia as an Abomination, they will forget how long it will take her to become one.

Paul remembers where he belongs and returns to his bedchambers. He lies beside Chani on the soft sheets and curls around her, drawing strength from the feel of her smooth skin. She turns in her sleep and wraps her arms around him, and he breathes in the scent of her hair, and thinks only of her. He will enjoy the present while it lasts.

The future will wait.


End file.
